James E Keenan on 14 Dec 2025 17:19:13 -0800


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

[Philadelphia-pm] QA assistance sought for Perl core distribution 

Friends,
If you have a few brain cycles to spare over the next 48 hours and would like to help out with a little QA project for the Perl 5 core distribution, please read on!
Periodically we have to deprecate functionality in the core that, for one reason or another, we judge to be sub-par. Our practice nowadays is to have the questionable functionality emit a warning which advises the user that the code is deprecated, will be removed from the language in an upcoming production release -- at which point the code will throw a fatal error. We try to identify CPAN distributions which will be affected by deprecations and fatalizations, but we can't always be certain that we've covered all cases.
In our current development cycle (5.43, leading to a 5.44 production release in May 2026), we have several deprecations in progress. We have a list of CPAN distributions whose code is likely to "break" when a particular deprecation is upgraded to an exception. We would like to recruit some volunteers to help us with this -- and such help would be particularly useful in the next 24 to 48 hours! 

What you will do if you volunteer is:
* I will send you a list of 10 CPAN distributions likely to be affected by a particular deprecation/fatalization. That list will also have URLs for the distribution's metacpan.org page and its page on CPANtesters (though the latter will not be immediately relevant).
* You will go to the distribution's Metacpan page, click on the link for "Bugtracker" and go to that distribution's issue tracker (usually on either rt.cpan.org or github.com).
* You will check the list of bug tickets/issues on that page to see whether there is any ticket open which seems to have a bearing on the deprecation in question. (I'll provide more information about the deprecation in individual emails once you've volunteered).
* If there is a pertinent bug ticket, you will read it to see whether the distribution's author/maintainer has responded. You will summarize the author's response to me, if any.
* If there is no pertinent bug ticket, you (a) will let me know that; and (b), if you feel ambitious, file such a bug ticket, then send me the URL for that ticket or issue.
If you want to help out here, please email me *off list* and I'll send you a list of 10 CPAN distributions needing checking.
(And while I have your attention here ... Please consider joining the new New York Perlmongers (ny.pm) mailing list at: 
https://groups.google.com/g/new-york-perlmongers).

Thank you very much.
Jim Keenan
_______________________________________________
Philadelphia-pm mailing list
Philadelphia-pm@pm.org
https://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/philadelphia-pm